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Mount St. Mary’s escapes while Kansas State cruises

From the album But You Are But It Has, Released digitally on February 3, 2017

Night one of the Opening Round in Dayton saw one very close game and the other game turned into a near double digit rout.

The Mountaineers led by as much as 11 points in the first half, but only led 32-29 at the break thanks to a New Orleans 10-2 run. Mount St. Mary’s hit five treys in the first 20 minutes. The Privateers (number 67 on the NCAA’s official Seed List) managed to lead briefly by five at one point and led by one with 1:46 left in regulation. The smallest guy on the court had the largest impact on the court, as 5’5″ guard Junior Robinson had 23 points on 9 of 14 shooting and also shot 3 of 6 from deep as Mount St. Mary’s escaped with a hard fought 67-66 win.

Quite a turnaround for this tiny school located north of Baltimore. They started the NEC season 1-11, but have won 19 of their last 23 games. With their close shave victory, The Mount will head east to snowy Buffalo to take on the defending champions of Villanova on Thursday night, the third of four games to air on CBS.

Kansas State came out firing on offense and had great lockdown defense to cut down Wake Forest

The Demon Deacons brought out the weird gray jerseys and they looked doomed from the start. Kansas State shot 6 of 9 from the field in the first 8 1/2 minutes, while Wake Forest was a rather dismal 2 of 6. It translated to a 40-36 lead at the half and most of the second half, the Wildcats cruised to a lead as high as 10 in the closing minutes. Forward Wesley Iwundu led the charge with 24 points on 6 of 9 shooting and going 11 for 13 from the free-throw line in 35 minutes of action. Also having a solid game for the mostly affable Bruce Weber was guard Kamau Stokes, finishing with 5 of 8 from three point territory as part of his 22 points in a nice 95-88 win.

For the game, Kansas State shot a blistering 31 for 67, good enough for 67 percent. The last time KSU shot over 60 percent in a game was in 2014. Wake Forest on the other hand was only 25 of 53 shooting the rock, which translated to a 47.2 percent clip. The Demon Deacons were led in scoring by forward John Collins with 26 and guard Bryant Crawford with 20 points.

Kansas State will fly west to Sacramento and take on the 6 seed of Cincinnati on Friday night, a game you can see Friday night on TruTV starting at 7:27 p.m. Eastern time.

Brief thought on seeing Greg Gumbel doing some DirecTV ads

One has the lead CBS Sports anchor playing second fiddle to Turner Sports’ Kenny Smith as he gets his head buffed (please don’t ask me why, ladies) and the other ad shows the same lounge signing guy pulling up at some weird checkpoint reminiscent of the old time Kodamatic camera drive-up stands of the 1970’s while singing “I Really Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing”…I forgot to get this validated.”

Of course, in the fantasy of my dreams I would do my fake singing of The La’s famous 1990 single, “There She Goes”:

There she goes

Posing for Playboy again

Sliding away from my brain

And I just can’t keep waitin’

The thrill of seeing Playmates again

There she goes

Posing for Playboy again

She texts my name

Doesn’t pull up lame

Why doesn’t she comment on my blog again?

I will be back again tomorrow for a brief recap of Night Two of the Opening Round, or what I loosely will refer to as the Appetizer Round.

Please have a good night, and to everyone in New England and parts of Northern Indiana–please try to stay safe from all of this snow.